Animated Atrocities 149/Transcript
Some viewers may find this disturbing. Mr. Enter: If I could give you guys one solitary warning, it would be to turn off the video right now. Intro Mr. Enter: I don't often say this anymore, and yeah I know it's kind of cliche, but we're talking about a special kind of show that I haven't dealt with for some time. I mean look at the title. Does the name Fleabag Monkeyface sound like it's going to be enjoyable? In any conceivable way?? Yes, this is a show that I brought up a few reviews back about a type of show that I don't like to review, but no, this show -- this show -- ''is something special! It needs to be seen to be believed. Ugh, but trust me, you don't want to believe in this show. One of the ''only reasons that I am even giving this show a look, cuz I need to check in on all the other candidates for my future top 10 Worst Animated Series: the 2010s list. Yeah, believe it or not, a show like this came out in the 2010s; 2011 specifically. Fleabag Monkeyface is a show that aired on the British CI TV network. Apparently, it was also based on a popular children's book series. And every one of those things sounded kind of foreboding of the show's quality. Like, I'm definitely not one to say an idea is doomed to fail, obviously. But I can say that the stars were pretty much in alignment against Fleabag Monkeyface ''being any kind of quality. When it comes to children's cartoons, based on a children's book series tends to read off as a cash-in. And no, I'm not just talking about ''Wayside; there are also cartoons like The Neverending Story cartoon which I will get to. And, uh, let's just say that I haven't had the best experience with British cartoons, and uh, Fleabag Monkeyface ''aired in 2011. That might be the most foreboding thing about this show. Not that coming out in 2011 is a bad thing in and of itself, but ''Fleabag Monkeyface is a grossout kid's cartoon that aired in 2011. Seriously, you're doing the Mega-Babies bit when we had shows like Regular Show,'' Adventure Time'','' Friendship Is Magic'','' Dan Vs.'' To say the least, the show appeared to be a bit of an anachronism. Actually, I think that's an understatement: this show not only waited for a trend to get popular, not only waited for a trend to get exceedingly bad, not only waited for everyone to get sick of the trend, but waited another decade before it finally decided to hop on the bandwagon. And this is probably one of the major reasons that I decided to review it. Grossout in kid's cartoons had been dead for years before this show! ''While other cartoons would certainly do episodes based on grossout, I can't think of a kid's show that went with the straight-up grossout angle since, debatably, ''Flapjack. And when cartoons start doing things that we should have moved past by now, I get a little annoyed! A good point in comparison: the humor in the show is basically on the level of the animation in The Magic School Bus reboot. Which I may or may not get to as some reviews. In essence, things haven't been like this for a very, very long time, and the medium is better now that things don't look like this anymore. This isn't acceptable because we have moved on from this mistake. Speaking of animation, let's talk about the animation in Fleabag Monkeyface. You'll notice one thing in particular about this show that is different from most other grossout cartoons: it's 3D-animated. And that might be because making a grossout show 3D is a bad idea! Bad idea is an understatement: making this show 3D killed any chance it had to be any sort of good. Because, here's the truly funny thing here; like, the only funny thing about Fleabag Monkeyface: it's not very good at grossout. The things they try to make disgusting and gross do not look disgusting and gross. Because it's in 3D! The snot and the slime you see in the show doesn't gross me out for the same reason that the slime in Super Mario Sunshine doesn't gross me out: it's too distant from any sort of reality! Grossout needs a specific kind of stylization to be effective, and on a television budget, it's really hard to stylize a 3D show! Like, the reason that Mega-Babies and Adult Party Cartoon and King Star King grossed me out so much, is because they were drawn in such a way that emphasized the disgust in every single frame.They went out of their way to make you feel the emotion that they wanted you to feel. And that's just not something that you can achieve in 3D animation, you know without a cinema budget! Something that this show clearly doesn't have. It's why they decided to make the Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs cartoon 2D; the kind of fluid motions that the movies are known for would be very, very expensive to do on a television show in 3D. Even though, that had its own brands of mistakes. Seriously, the guy's nose looks like a cancerous tumor; how do you get character design that bad? This is Fleabag Monkeyface ''compared to the cover of the books. On the two-dimensional book covers, he looks relatively appealing and has his own kind of charm. I get that they tried to make him look uglier in the cartoon, and that's kind of the point, but, in the end, because the animation isn't technically good, it ends up looking like they just didn't know how to technically build a model. The two boys that made Fleabag Monkeyface constantly hold the same expression because they clearly don't have access to the budget to make 3D models expressive. Look at this giant ear monster destroy these buildings: all of the rubble is on the same fucking layer, none of it moves naturally, and you can tell almost immediately! It doesn't look good in any way whatsoever! If you want a good example to compare this to, you should actually look at, ugh, ''Fanboy and Chum-Chum, honestly. I hate that show; like, I find it annoying to all hell and back. But, I will admit, it does have some very good television 3D animation. And it knows how to animate in 3D. The characters all have interesting designs and they really did figure out how to make 3D models emote. Yes, today we have a show so bad, that I am complimenting Fanboy and Chum-Chum and Adult Party Cartoon. Like, at least those shows knew what they wanted to do and knew how to achieve what they wanted to do. Their problems came out because the end goal was the problem. Now, that leads us to a very important question: what's worse? The guy who lights your house on fire, or the guy who's too stupid to know how to light your house on fire no matter how hard he tries? Not that the show doesn't squick me out at all. It has some consistent animation problems and, uh, animation problems can be quite uncanny. And this show has one consistent animation problem that occurs throughout the entire running time of the entire series. Dirk: I WANT MY TV SHOW BACKKKK!!! laugh JonTron: Are you fucking kidding me?! Mr. Enter: This character's name is Dirk and his character design has such an issue, that I am baffled that they ever let it get to air. I'm going to give you a second to try and come up with the problem of this character design. Actually, no because his head looks like a fucking penis! I know that we all joked that the Minions look like penises and if you squint while you're looking at the head of Arnold's grandpa, that looks like a penis too, but no. Like, if you wanted to make a penis in 3D, because you're weird or-or demented, the villain's head in the show is exactly how you'd make that 3D penis look. There are really only 2 possibilities: either they were so incompetent that they didn't realize the problem with this model, after seeing it a million times, or they actually, actively wanted one of their characters to be a walking penis. On a show aimed at children! And, if I had to make a guess, well his name is Dirk; it's one letter off from dick, he dresses up as a cock, and if that's not enough, look at the helicopter that he drives. Dirk: 'while piloting phallic-copter Edd: That's disturbing. Mr. Enter: I know that it's common to put adult jokes in kid's cartoons -- ''Animaniacs, Ren and Stimpy, Spongebob, the examples are numerous -- but there's no art or subtlety here. Like, speaking of which, putting adult humor in the show: what adult in his right mind would ever watch Fleabag Monkeyface? Black Screen: You? Mr. Enter: I decided to review Fleabag Monkeyface! I am clearly not in my right mind, right now! Now, when picking a specific episode to review from this show, I have many, many options. And while, 'Return of the Dung Zombies' -- where they battle zombies made of camel shit -- is very tempting, as does an episode called 'War of the Noses', I think I have to go with the first episode of the show, 'When Earwax Attacks', to give you the proper Fleabag Monkeyface introduction. After the intro, which gives us all the belching, snot, and strange, yellow substances that you can want... Monkeyface intro We open up at an announcer declaring the 50th annual Grossout Award. And this is actually a perfect scene to show how bad the animation in this show is! '''Female Newscaster: For the 50th annual Grossout Awards! And, here come the team behind Grossout TV! You know, they've been hotly tipped to win an award tonight! Mr. Enter: It's not as obvious as something like Rapsittie Street Kids, but I think it might help you learn some of the shortcuts that animators take that people do tend to notice. This is a perfect show to watch if you're an animator and you want to know what not to do. First of all, those girls in the background look like they've got their faces painted on; they look like Nintendo Miis. The area where the background ends, the horizon line, is way too obvious; looks like the road just runs into the skyscraper. The stairs are too high to be used as actual stairs from this distance. The tree is obviously nothing more than a perfect circle! There are two models of the exact same person with an orange vest; the only difference is that glasses are used on one of them. The face of the newscaster looks. Just. Wrong! This guy seems to be confused and is waving at something on the other side of the limo. Then, we see Dick and his cock watching in on them, and here's one problem that I've noticed that is consistent with the show... Dirk: 'I am interested in the fact that ''Fleabag Monkeyface is at the Grossout Awards while I'' am sat heeerrre. Mr. Enter: He says this after we've been shown that Fleabag Monkeyface is at the Grossout Awards and he himself is not. This happens constantly: after they show us something, they tend to immediately tell us what anyone with any modicum of intelligence would be able to figure out just by watching the damn show! It's show-don't-tell, not show-''and-tell! 'Fleabag Monkeyface: '''Wow, this is too much! Oh, I'd like to thank my friends, my family and I'd like to thank cheese, I'd like to thank plumbing... Mr. Enter: Oh, and-and that's another thing: Fleabag Monkeyface has an ''awful voice! Like a fucking awful, awful, awful voice! ''Most of the voice acting in the show is tolerable. But Fleabag? Oh my God! It-it-it hurts. It really does. As much as I complain about shows that assault my eyes, shows that assault my ears I tend to find ''10,000 times worse! ''Like, even after all these years, I still remember how much trouble that ''Ctrl-Alt-Delete gave me, because the audio on that show was so incredibly incredibly painful! And I want to say something outright: when I complain about bad voice acting, it's usually not the voice actors fault; believe it or not. A lot of the reason the voice acting turns out to be bad, is because of bad direction. I could not stand the likes of Bubsy or Coconut Fred, but both of them are voiced by Rob Paulsen, who is a very talented voice actor by anyone's metric. And Harry Scary was voiced by John Stevenson, who had an impressive legacy of over 40 years of voice acting. I can imagine that they were given the direction to be as annoying as possible. Like, after Spongebob hit the scene, that-that seemed to be a common tactic the directors wanted. And all of the talent in the world isn't going to save you from a bad voice or a bad performance, if the director wants you to sound like Jar Jar Binks! And well... 'Fleabag Monkeyface: '''Wow, this is too much! Oh, I'd like to thank my friends, my family and I'd like to thank cheese, I'd like to thank plumbing. I'd like to thank all the little guys. Fleas! Cockroaches! Without you, none of this would've been possible! Mr. Enter: I-I will give him this: he sounds more ''articulate than Jar Jar Binks. But, uh, he sounds almost exactly like an articulate Jar Jar Binks. And also, this is just a nitpick, but the writing in the show is absolutely awful! 'Award Presenter: '''Tell us how you first met Fleabag Monkeyface. Gene: Okay! But we have to go back to the very beginning. Mr. Enter: Yes. I'd imagine that talking about how a relationship started would involve talking about the very beginning of said relationship. This show had 52 episodes, by the way. Long ago, these 2 boys liked grossout stuff, and watched a show called ''Yucky Science! I'd imagine that it was some cheap ripoff of Grossology. '''TV: '''Yucky Science '''Gerald: '''This show is sooo coool! Mr. Enter: And they say it takes effort to write kids! Nah, you just gotta read Dennis the Menace comic strips and beat yourself over the head with a Bart Simpson branded baseball bat a few times, and you've got fully developed kid characters coming right to you! Anyway, they're interrupted by the... '''Gene and Gerald: '''The Smuglies! Mr. Enter: Okay. This scene... is wonderful. If you're trying to educate people on how not to write cartoons, this is the first scene that you should show them. I want to point out every single thing wrong with this scene, because it is that horrific. Alright, these characters, the Smuglies -- nice name! -- they're the prim and proper ones. Guess what horrible, awful, no-good thing happens to them in this grossout cartoon: ''absolutely nothing happens to them! ''Like, this is their only scene in the first episode, and nothing gross happens to the prim and proper characters entitled, The Smuglies. How does the guy who viscerally hates grossout -- like, it's my least favorite genre in all of animation and it's something that I could live my whole life without ever seeing again -- how does he know more about writing grossout than the people who decided to bring ''Fleabag Monkeyface ''to television? Having the prim and proper characters get out of the scene in a grossout cartoon unscathed, is kind of like having a clown go through a pie factory without getting hit with a pie. '''Gene: '''What's that noise? Mr. Enter: Yes. The two kids silently watching butterflies in the backyard is producing just an absurd amount of noise! '''Male Smugly: Well put, Sister. Mr. Enter: Yes, Boy with Red Hair. Good to point out to the audience that the girl who looks almost exactly like you is, in fact, your sister; they never would have been able to guess. Gerald: 'The Smuglies are the annoying twins who live next door. Mr. Enter: You see, it was absolutely important for them to state what we just saw because if they didn't, we probably wouldn't be able to follow along in the story. It's standard reaction when you bring up characters in a flashback ''that have literally nothing to do with said flashback! ''Like, I think that this bears repeating, because this is probably the most significant problem with this scene: they're talking about when they first met Fleabag Monkeyface, they bring up some anecdote about these twins, ''that have literally nothing to do with the rest of the story, and are never mentioned again throughout the rest of the episode! They have word choices that suggest that these kids are going to try to stop Fleabag Monkeyface, but no. These two kids never. Appear. Again. In the episode! ''And the kids talking at an awards show, choose to talk about these twins. I mean, there's this line... '''Gerald: '''They're into fluffy, nice stuff and they always get in the way! Mr. Enter: Yes, their butterfly watching in your backyard was doing so much to prevent you from watching your favorite television show. ''Thoughts! Use them!! ''They can be quite helpful sometimes. '''Gerald: '''This show is fantastic! No wonder it's so big! Mr. Enter: You know, I just realized that this kid never told me that he was, in fact, a human being. So I'm going to assume that he is not. I know that that's ''usually obvious that our main characters are human, and that ''usually ''goes without saying, but this kid has been pretty dedicated to letting nothing go without saying. And so, I have to assume that anything he's not talking about just isn't a fact. I bet that's like the twist of the episode, isn't it? So, after this anecdote about the twins that has nothing to do with anything, the show gives out a competition. '''Dirk: You, the viewers need to make the most disgusting gloop ever! And send it to us! Mr. Enter: Shit in a jar, mail it to you. Got it! Actually, what they try to do is not far off: they throw a bunch of things into a toilet bowl, lightning strikes it, and then Fleabag Monkeyface is born! Dick here talks about how his TV show is tanking because the 90s ended or something, and then he decides to turn evil! Dirk: That was when I hatched the plan. The plan to go evil! laugh Deathbeak: That's when we got the outfits. Mr. Enter: That-that's his reason. His TV show was tanking, turn evil! Okay who are you talking to? The kid on the award show is talking to an audience; Dick is reminiscing; and you're just talking to nothing. What do you mean he's addressing the audience? What audience?! '' Then Dick decides to make a giant monster. '''Dirk:' I would create a vast gross-out monster! I would unleash it on the city and film every moment! Deathbeak: But the gloops weren't gross enough and the monsters were pathetic. Mr. Enter: I didn't skip anything. That-that's the next step in Dick's logic. His TV show is tanking, so become evil and make a giant monster. Yes, thank you. What a convenience: a show that has its own recap. So when the audience finally wakes up from their coma, they know what's going on! But-but seriously, could you run this plan by me again? Your show's ratings are tanking because you're running out of topics, so you decide to become evil and make giant monsters. I, uh, I-I don't see your logic; that-that's what I'm saying. Also, they transition back to the flashback in the worst way possible! And by that, I mean that they don't transition at all! We're following the same two characters in the same location, wearing the same outfits. Talking in the past tense and then out of nowhere, they see Fleabag Monkeyface for the first time on their spy screen. That is just some awful, awful editing; or the absence of editing, anyway. So what happens next? I-I don't even know. Dick ends up knocking out Fleabag Monkeyface in order to steal his earwax in order to make a giant monster in order to keep his show from tanking because he was running out of topics on said TV show. But in the end, it was all a plan by an evil banana to send two monkeys out into a desert to starve to death. Walter White: You're goddamn right. Mr. Enter: The fact that that actually sounds plausibly related as the next step in the story, is a significant problem with said story! The definition of plot is not just random things happen; you need some cohesion! Every step should logically move to the next! I mean, it would make some sense if they were making jokes out of this, like Weird Al's Albuquerque or something. But, the delivery of the voice actors and the expressions, it just does not lend itself to a quirky, over-the-top, strange tone. Nothing about anything leads me to thinking this weird, random story was intentionally weird and random. Fleabag Monkeyface: My hearing. It's, well, working! Mr. Enter: Wait. Wait-wait-wait-wait. You never established that you had a hearing problem? And believe it or not, this sounds small but it really does piss me off. And it's really the biggest clue to the incompetence of the writing of this episode. You spend time talking about two characters that weren't in the rest of the episode, instead of establishing that Fleabag Monkeyface had a hard time hearing, something that would've had a clear payoff. Like this is the barest basics of storytelling that is just not being achieved here. It's like the square block does not fit into the triangle hole. That is the level that we are on with this show! So the ear monster destroys the town but Gerald: That was when we discovered that Fleabag had grossout powers! Mr. Enter: Okay kid, shut up! If I wanted to listen to the audiobook of the episode, I'll seek out the audiobook of the episode! Dirk: The monkey child! It's ruining my plan!! Deathbeak: His power is too strong! Mr. Enter: He hasn't done anything yet! ''It's amazing how bad the writing is in this episode. I don't mean, like, the story, although that's shit too, I mean the dialogue and how the words connect. The actual, you know, writing. Which is the ''last problem in the world you'd think would exist in a show based on a series of books, but I digress. I'd blame this on a bad translation, but it was based on an English series of books for a British television show. It was originally in English, but then again, I guess you gotta Google Translate it to Mandarin, then to Swedish, then back to English before anyone can understand what you write. Seriously, it's the most basic common sense issues. Proofreading an 11-minute episode to have the barest bit of semblance is not that hard! And I know what you're thinking: why am I getting so bent out of shape? How good could you expect something entitled Fleabag Monkeyface ''to be? I don't know. How good could I expect something called ''The Lego Movie to be? In this era, that shouldn't be a question anymore. Wasn't one of the biggest hits last year the Captain Underpants movie? Captain Underpants: Stand down, monster! Tra-la-LAAAAA! I THINK I'M STARTING TO TIRE HIM OUT! Mr. Enter: If that could be good, why couldn't this? And when you don't put any effort into the work we're given because it sounds stupid, well, you get The Emoji Movie, now don't you? Hell, for all I know, the books that this is based on could be fucking fantastic, I don't know! And if the books are good, or even average, that makes this adaptation even worse! Fleabag Monkeyface: '''It was nothing, guys. I know. Really! silence Mr. Enter: Okay, what are you talking about now? There's no applause. Like, is that the joke? Or were they just too lazy to put in a cheering sound effect? Like, the delivery is so bad, I legitimately do not know what they were going for. Putting in a cheering effect is not hard. '''Fleabag Monkeyface: '''It was nothing, guys. I know. Really! applause Mr. Enter: There. It-it-it's not hard. I-I understand that it constantly sounds like I'm nitpicking, but this show is filled with so many small problems, like every little second is filled with another little, small problem and absolutely nothing right. It-it's quite stellar, actually. Anyway, Dick talks to his boss- Oh my god! *stammering* Like, I-I thought that Dick's design made me cringe, but if you're going to make one of the characters look like a penis, at the very least, like, a-at the very, very least, don't make a clone of that design look like a-a penis th-that was... ugh... like, all I can think of looking at this... poor, unfortunate soul i-i-i-i-is ouch! I, h-h-h-h-he's not in pain, but h-his very existence makes me feel pain. I-I-I think we should get to ending this. Because the giant monster was stopped, Dick loses his job and gives a new TV show to Fleabag Monkeyface's friends; like, on the spot! It's another plot point that doesn't connect anything else. And we end on a belch. '''Dirk: I WANT MY TV SHOW BAAAAAAAAACCCCKKK!! Mr. Enter: Buddy, you got an evil villain lair and a monster creation device! You don't need a television show! Be happy with what you got, man; you-you got it good! A-A-A-And this is between you and me, but... I-I-I kinda don't think you got the face for television! I-I'm sure that maybe there's someone on the internet who would have a lot of use for you, sir! And with that, my patience for the show is over!. I don't know what to say. There is no excuse for this. There is no excuse for any of this! It's a kid show, I-I don't care. It's a grossout show, I don't care. It's based on a children's series, I don't care! None of this should be this fucking bad! There is no excuse you can muster that defends anything in this show. It is one of those true failures at every single level! There is not one thing that the show tries to do that succeeds. The animation? Dated when it came out. The humor even fails at being immature. No two story points connect. The writing is not just awful, the writing itself is the worst! I'm not kidding. ''Newborn Cooties ''was at least coherent. You can have better writing by pulling words out of a dictionary! This one is over. I'll see you in a couple of years when I do that top 10 Worst of The 2010s list.